Education
The Three Hierarchical Layers Of Books
My friend, Glenn, over at My Adventure to Enlightenment is studying-abroad this semester in Morocco. He’ll be leaving in a few weeks and realized he only has room for roughly 6 books in his luggage. He is looking for books that have re-readability, provoke deep, challenging thought, and he is seeking non-fiction. This made me think what determines re-readability in a non-fiction text.
The Personal Library
The Quantum-Library
The Anti-Library
The Personal Library is a the basic layer containing all of your possessed books and other literary works. It possesses those that you have read, re-read, and have yet to read. For the separation of the layers this is the only layer that contains books that you have read only once.
The Anti-Library is something that has become a bit of a buzz word after being mentioned in Nassim Taleb’s, The Black Swan. He quote’s Umberto Eco on his view of a library(quote provided below). It is the layer that holds text that you have yet to read.
‘”Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library.”‘
However, there is another layer that is not discussed as of yet. It contains the texts that you have read, but ultimate meaning still eludes it’s readers. A book that shifts meaning depending on the perspective used to percieve it’s words. A layer that contains the ultimate in re-readability. This layer is like a movie, you watch it once and you enjoy it, you watch it several more times and you notice several subtle nuances, and the longer you re-watch the more you notice. These are the text’s that he is wanting to pack.
The Quantum-Library is the layer that co-exists as a member of both the Library and the Anti-Library. It is something you may have read, but when read again with a different perspective it exists in another form. These type’s of books are the ultimate for a bibliophile. It is the layer described above and contains the texts that you re-read.
So if you know of any texts that exist in the Quantum layer leave a comment here or over at Glenn’s blog he’d really appreciate it.
Addendum:
Seeing people come in from Zenpundit, Jay@Soob, OZ Deichman, and Ace Hanna, I have added my own list with reasons for their selection.
The Top 5 TED Talks That Inspire Me
I enjoy thinking about innovative ways to do things and TED offers an amazing way to look through the eyes of influential people in different areas. The conferences may be elitist gatherings but; rather than keep this knowledge locked away they have begun to share their ideas for change. So I decided I’d give you a list of the talks that I enjoy.
1. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
A speech on how capability should no longer be based on educational standard and how creativity is a new way to develop one’s capability. Imagination is a the ultimate gift to a child.He takes an astounding non-conformist view and presents it excellently.
2. Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce
Gladwell speaks about how people base their judgements. He delves into human variability in choice.A very interesting insight in how to develop a product that will be diversly accepted, increasing it’s aspects to fit or providing more with different aspects.
3. Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice
Schwartz looks at the inverse of Gladwell’s talk and how over variation in choice can cause more harm than good. Showing that our world is becoming so simplified for groups that the world is being diluted in complexity.
4. Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
Larry is showing how people are being restricted further and further from modifying the IP of another and creating something new. This talk is quite motivating in the way that you think about recreating it has been around for century’s and now people are labeling it piracy. To go along with this I recommend reading The Pirate’s Dilemma.
5. Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen
Hans Rosling delivers a speech that talks about the inefficiency in the development of current thought, from pre-conceived notions. He displays the data in a fascinating way that enthralls you as you watch it move through time.
Education Pt 2 – Personal Economics, Subsidized Education, And the Morality Of It All
Originally Posted on a defunct blog: 3/15/08 Update: First paragraph is heavily flawed after I altered the original math to make it more simple, by adding a link to an outside source, the link is valid just not for this case.
First unto the personal economics, I’m going to defer this to another persons observations. Now of course this is merely a perception on how well you can do with a High School Diploma(HSD) compared to a B.S. The HSD will have roughly a 8 year head start over the BS; as such the BS would have to be putting roughly 2 to 3 times that of the HSD for roughly 1.5 to 2 times longer, just to be roughly even.
Now on to the topic of Subsidized Education. This is the act of the government providing grant money to help students attend college. The government in the past few years has spent around $200 billion annually towards higher education; this can be tracked back for nearly a half century $7 billion in 1965 to $170 billion in 1995 so on average we’re spending $100 billion annually for the last 30 years and with a 60% failure rate. We have wasted $2.4 trillion dollars on education, roughly one-fifth of our national debt. This has caused an effect that has allowed the colleges and universities to raise the price of admission drastically, hurting the middle-class.
Morally, I feel that we should remove subsidies in the education industry. In removing the subsidies and regulating the amount that a school could charge we could gradually reach an equilibrium and prevent the facilities from relentlessly raising tuition rates. In doing this, we would help the economy by stabilizing wages and allowing our country to slowly shift more towards productivity.
Now how do we become more productive. We gradually have more citizens filling the roles of the illegal immigrant laborers, the current state of our nation is that we are a nation of hedonistic intellectuals when our society needs physical labor, not mental. If you were a true intellectual you would develop your skills and let yourself be discovered by others. If you aren’t willing to express your intellectual capacity your have yet to realize any dream requires will and determination.
This is the nation of freedom and dreams that our forefathers fought for, our rights and dreams, with their blood, sweat, and tears. Yet, we have become a nation of daydreamers who don’t have a clue about what true labor is. Working men founded one of the strongest nations and we, their heirs to this land, have become the hedonistic clan to lead the United States down the path of Greeks and the Romans. The greatest empires fall when they believe they are greater than all others, another shall rise with a dream and and prove them wrong.
So do you have the will and determination to follow through with your dreams?
Education Pt 1 – What Is It, The Social Perception and Ideology
Education in the formal sense is part of “The Plan,” it is one of the cornerstones of modern society, and in general a very interesting subject on a multitude of levels. It possesses economical, ideological, moral, and societal value to the modern world. The world would not fail without it, but it would neither grow.
A formal education is possessing the knowledge through coursework and the conversion of knowledge from one body to another, both mechanics and linguistics of the course. It is often referred to as a formal learning environment where one is to pick-up skills in a particular field, along with knowledge from a more vast pool of knowledge of general education. Generally, this area is merely obtained to comply with “The Plan” to obtain a higher salary or general monetary gain.
Learning, however, does not come just from such a formal environment. We use the formal environment to leverage one’s future wealth. Learning is habitual to many a human spirit, and we are constantly learning, if we seek knowledge and understanding. Learning can be more influential and more focused outside of a formal education, or vice-versa. However, we all shall make the choice between a formal education or a non-formal education whether focused or not.
Social Perception and Ideology guide us through the realms of our life and to us choosing to follow “The Plan,” to lead the dreams of our families, our friends, and the general public. We choose to do this because it is pushed upon us, from when we are young, “The only way you’ll be anybody is if you go to college.” I have come to the realization that if we seek knowledge, it shall not be hidden, it shall not be shrouded from our heart, however society will hide the wealth and acceptance from us, because we did not follow the societal plan. Society shall turn us away without proof of our knowledge even if we possess more knowledge and skill, because we don’t have a piece of paper saying we possess that knowledge and skill.